A Dead God's Tear (The Netherwalker Trilogy) (25 page)

There was only one chance that she could think of. The third quick cast was a magical shield, strong enough to hold spell and sword from touching her for a brief couple seconds. She could use it to escape the side of the cliff wall, to escape the trap of those spears. Drop a fire storm spell right on top of the three bandits in front of them, then use her spell as cover from the ones above her.

It was a waste of a quick cast and it would leave her vulnerable, without Jared to defend her, but what other choice did they have? She could use the reprieve to save Marcius, and together they might be able to form some typ
e of defense.

It was their only hope.

She allowed her eyes to slip back into the nether, preparing to shield herself. She dared to briefly glance over at Marcius, half out of fear that her companion, maybe friend, might already be dead. No, she let go a shaky breath, thankfully he wasn't. It looked like it wouldn't stay that way for long, however.

Something caught her eye: the telltale gathering of nether around the apprentice.

What could he be casting
?

Her green eyes widened. She recognized the spell! Th
ere is no way he could be intending to cast that!

Alicia barely had time to redirect the shield spell as Marcius dropped a fireball at the ground below his feet.

❧
　❧　❧

Thump. Thump-thump. Thump. Thump-thump.

A heartbeat. It was the first thing Marcius was aware of. Strong and unrelenting in its cadence. The feeling of warmth against the side of his face and his chest, and the familiar swaying motion made him realize he was being carried. Elation flooded throu
gh him at the realization, they must have won! Somehow he had not died when he lobbed that fireball, and Alicia and Jared must have beaten the bandits!

Last thing he remembered was angrily spitting in the face of the oggron as he launched the spell at the g
round, defiant in what he thought would be his last action of life. How acutely the anger had consumed him then, driving him to stay awake despite the waves of dizziness that tried to force his attentions elsewhere. The eyes of the oggron, oh those terrible black eyes! It was the urge to drive away that gleaming victory contained within the darkened orbs that had allowed him to force out the correct arcane phrases despite the iron-hard hand clamped around his throat.

And now that he was alive
. . .

He let g
o a sigh of relief, only then noticing how much his body ached. The skin on his lower half felt singed, as if it was rubbed raw, and a throbbing headache had developed in the brief time he had been awake. There was a nasty taste in his mouth, like slime, but he ignored the urge to spit it out, not wanting to ruin the moment. He was too content with just basking in the glow of victory to be worried about such mundane things as being uncomfortable.

They had won!

Something wasn't right, he realized slowly as his mind awoke fully. The pieces didn't fit. Why was he even alive? Marcius had seen the devastating effect of a fireball when he practiced the spell behind Antaigne's cottage. The spell had cut a swath of destruction in about a five foot radius from the impact point, even the rock itself had fused together in the heat. There was no way he should have been able to survive that.

Not that he was complaining.

Who was carrying him? Jared, though strong for his build, certainly wasn't up to the task of carrying an injured person any long distance. And the very notion of Alicia carrying him was absurd, though the mental image did make a flutter go through his stomach. Then who could it be? Perhaps someone had found the three of them, injured from the fight, and was bringing them back to their place to be nursed to health? Marcius found he liked that thought. He could use a bit of pampering, and he did feel beaten up.

It occurred to him that he could answer his question by simply opening his eyes, but he now realiz
ed he was afraid as to what he might find. He liked the conjuring of his imagination and was loathing to part with them. Reality had a habit of letting people down.

The gnawing sensation of 'wrongness' grew stronger the longer he tried to ignore it, until
he could do it no more. Slowly he opened his eyes, the light a painful intrusion to his deprived eyes and he was forced to squint as it eventually grew clearer.

He screamed.

Chapter 15

"B
oss, the raiding party has returned," Alec informed, parting the flap of the tent and sticking his blonde head in.

The Boss of the Solikivian bandit group merely nodded his confirmation. The young bandit nodded in return then exited the tent, the flap stir
ring gently at his leaving. The commotion outside gave weight to the boy's words. It was the shuffling of feet and of voices eagerly mingling to learn what had transpired, and judging by the general tone it would seem as if the jaunt had been a success. The familiar excitement of a returned raiding party hung about the air, but it was something that brought no positive feeling to the Boss.

The man sighed, running his hand through his coarse, long black hair. He wondered what his wife and child would have th
ought if they could see him now, a thought that he would often dwell on during his brief moments of solitude. The great and honorable Gregory Lecorix, former Captain of the Lorinia Royal Guard, playing leader to a bunch of bandits?

All things considered, h
e
had
managed to climb up from a proverbial hole in the ground. He had once been a homeless exile, reduced to wandering Faelon in mindless despair. Too cowardly to take his own life, and too ashamed to settle down, he hid from himself and his past by joining a loose collection of bandits, hoping perhaps somebody's sword, or perhaps the bottom of a mug, could put an end to his misery.

Fate continued its mockery. Instead of finding death, he found himself the leader of the group when the previous Boss passed
away. In fact, it had been Gregory's own sword that had sped the old miser onward to the afterlife. The thing that surprised him the most was how eagerly he accepted the mantle, using the guise of leadership as yet another shield from his past.

He did garn
er results though. Ironically his training and knowledge of the army allowed him to cull the rag-tag group of people together into a well disciplined fighting force. All races were accepted in his band, merit alone decided who received accolades, and he treated everyone fairly. He even took the same portions out of victory spoils that they did, instead of demanding a larger part for merely telling them what to do. It also didn't hurt that he knew how the army operated, which allowed the group to stay several steps ahead of any legal repercussions. Even the infamous Bloodhound was thrown off the trail more than once.

And how they loved him for it! He had assembled probably the most loyal group of bloodthirsty criminals in all of Faelon. It was this camaraderi
e, so rare among bandits and thieves, which allowed their group to flourish when all others floundered straight into the local dungeons and subsequent chopping blocks.

Yes, he had done pretty well for someone exiled for murder.

But it was just so empty. The life was shallow and he found himself often just going through the motions. Once he got the band running smoothly, once his energies no longer had a direction or purpose, inevitably his thoughts would sink back to what had got him there in the first place. His family, his friends, and his honor, all of it stripped away in that one costly act of rage. Anger is fleeting; but grief is eternal
.
The old adage served him well.

He had murdered a wizard in cold blood. Murdered a wizard who was in service of Lo
rinia, simply for the fact that the senile old bat had the guts to accidently unleash a spell in the midst of his soldiers, then nonchalantly laugh it off. His own son had been in that regiment.

Every injured soldier he had seen ever since that day took o
n the face of his beloved son. He had spent too many years fighting, been in one too many battles, and it all came to a head. Something inside of him snapped, unleashing an all consuming hatred. It didn't take him long to seek out the wizard and run him through, simply to quell the growing madness in his heart.

The way he looked at it, wizards were indirectly responsible for his current state of apathy and despair. They were nothing but a bunch of finger waggling demons that played with powers beyond their
control, treating normal people and their lives with similar irreverence. He was well aware that the reasoning made little sense in the grand scheme of things, but when had mankind ever followed the precepts of logic?

The ensuing silence from outside the t
ent was his cue to make an appearance. They were waiting for him.
Just like children wanting to be told what to do
.
Gregory paused at the exit of his tent as he ran through the mental checklist required to be successful as a bandit lord.
Intimidating armor? Check. Weapons displayed in a casual, yet overtly threatening manner? Check. Scowl? Check.

He knew it was critical to maintain a certain appearance. Everyone has their roles to play, and being a leader was just one of them. Though Gregory seriously doubt
ed a real bandit leader would need to run through that mental list, it should be something that comes naturally.

This only served to further indicate that this really wasn't
his
role, but fate had decided otherwise. Perhaps the thing that scared him the most was how he still went along with it. Once a murderer, always a murderer. . . Still, the notion tugged a brief derisive smile to his lips. In the end, it was what everything was reduced to: a role to be filled.

And so he left the tent, pushing the deers
kin flap aside. The dreary mid-afternoon light assailed his eyes, casting the fellow members of his band as indistinct shapes, all crowded around something of interest, even as the pungent aroma of cooking meat and burning wood from the nearby campfires filled his nostrils. He found himself marveling at how his very presence quelled the few murmurs from the surrounding crowd. It was a gesture of respect; respect he had earned and stalwartly reinforced.

It didn't hurt that he looked the part; something which
he silently and grudgingly admitted. At just a hair over six feet, he was well muscled from years spent on the battlefield in service of Lorinia. Several wickedly edged curved blades lay at rest on his belt, ready to be brought to bear at any moment, along with meticulously kept black leather armor with interlinked links of metal that had obviously seen, and persevered through, many battles.

Scars, a visible monument to both lives he had led, covered almost every showing part of his body, along with a par
ticularly nasty one that ran its way from the bottom of his right ear, across the cheek, coming to rest at just touching the edge of his lip. But it was the cold as ice, blue crystalline eyes that sealed the deal, reinforcing the fact that this man was not one to be trifled with.

He could, and would, do anything he pleased.

"Boss. . . you're not going to believe this." A small blonde man, barely more than a child really, pushed his way through the crowd.

"I won't believe what, Alec?" he responded, crossing
his arms.

"We
. . . uh. . . seem to have caught the wizards. . .
alive
."

Only now was Gregory aware as to
why
he was the focal point of his band's attention. Every pair of eyes (or in case of some people, just a singular eye) was trained on him, eagerly anticipating his reaction at the news. It was no secret that he hated wizards, though the exact reason for it was never disclosed to them.

A mixture of eagerness and anger gripped him as he made a beeline for the crowd, which respectively parted as he appro
ached. Sure enough, in the center, three figures, hands and legs tied and mouths gagged, lay kneeling along with a gathering of knapsacks and bags, what he could only assume was the spoils of the raid. The figures, a woman and two men, were watching the crowd with expressions ranging from alarm to unsullied loathing.

Another surprise awaited Gregory as he finally got a good look at these so-called wizards. By the Gods! They are nothing more than children! A score of years at most!  His band didn't seem to c
are, for now that the Boss had arrived, they brazenly started to hound the prisoners.

Jeers, taunts, bawdy suggestions, and insults were thrown with abandon, each one becoming more and more frenzied in execution and delivery. Gregory even allowed himself
to briefly become caught up in the elation of the situation, taking a bit of perverse pleasure in seeing the panic now grace the features of all three of the prisoners.

Slowly, though, his feelings turned from excitement to disgust. When had he fallen so l
ow as to derive pleasure from such an act against his natural grain? These people were nothing more than children!

They represented not the aloof, unfeeling, haughty wizards he had grown to hate. He had to do something before the crowd worked itself up to
more than just throwing words. "Quiet, all of you!" he shouted, anger evident. The crowd immediately settled down and listened, exactly like the obedient children they were. "What are we? Animals? No, we are bandits, and bandits we may be, but I will not have us acting like uncouth louts! I want the prisoners in my tent for questioning, and a full report by the raid leader, including casualties, within five minutes! Loot will be distributed after I am done interrogation. Now clear out of here, the lot of you!"

At that, he spun around on the heel of his boot, not waiting to see if they complied as his black cape swirled in a small whirlwind of fury, and stomped his way to his tent. Angrily he flipped aside the deerskin flap and plopped himself down on the la
rge pillow in the back, one of the few luxuries he allowed himself, and struggled to calm down.

The lamp, resting on a crate in the corner, flickered violently at his passing, as if a reflection of what boiled under the surface. It wouldn't do for his pri
soners to see him in such a state. They were, at the very least, wizards, though it would seem as if time had yet to twist them into the image he hated.

He disliked seeing his people act like that. It confirmed a truth that he tried to deny. They were, at
their very basic, nothing more than a band of bloodthirsty brigands. He had tried to give them order, form them into something beyond a gathering of witless people out for only themselves. It had worked, but only while he was around. It took so little coercion to revert them back to their original forms.

A small cough roused him from his private contemplations. Looking up, he saw his second in command, Rorian, standing politely in front of him. The man was as much as an oddity in the band as Gregory was. Ro
rian had all the makings of a bard: a flair for the dramatic and aptitude for music, in addition to a healthy dose of charisma. How he had become a part of the band was something not even Gregory knew, for the man had been with the group as long as anyone could remember. Though, he admitted that he had come to enjoy the intelligent man's company, in addition to the music he provided the men during the frequent lonely nights. But it didn't stop him from scowling anyway, the events prior still fresh in his mind.

"What do you want, Rorian?"

His second in command just smiled, not at all fazed by his Boss's bad mood. "You've requested a report, Boss. If you recall, it was yours truly that led the successful expedition, since you had prior engagements." Gregory waved for him to continue. "Your strategy worked out brilliantly, sir. We kept ourselves sparse and spread out, as you suggested. The wizards were obviously confused and little spell play came forth from them. Any attempts to cast normally were thwarted as we sought out to capture one of their party. We managed to do so, and they were quick to surrender in lieu of us killing him. Again, as you thought they would, sir."

Gregory nodded, happy that wizards were still as predictable as ever. Now came the part
every leader was loathe to hear. "Casualties, Rorian?"

The red haired man licked his lips, and then continued. "We only lost one, to a spell cast by the woman. It was Yori, sir, fried by a bolt of lightning. We had two more injured, one when the lightning
jumped from Yori to him, and Krag was struck in the chest by a spell. We suspect he has broken ribs. But, all in all, it was a smashing success, sir. No pun intended."

Gregory grimaced, Yori was a good man. "How did Gragis take it when his brother was stru
ck?"

Rorian's huge grin told him exactly how the protective oggron took it. "Not well at all, sir. We thought the oggron would kill the one man. He nearly in fact did, but somehow the wizard had released a spell in an attempt, we think, at killing both of
them. A suicide with extras, if you will. But the spell must have gone awry. Nothing came of it besides an unconscious wizard and a very confused, Gragis."